Sprint confirms our woes, won't take chances for iPhone 4S cheap plastic

Not even a bumper makes it 100% safe

    Sprint is voting thumbs-down on having its Total Equipment Protection plans available to the iPhone 4S, probably following the bad experience with iPhone 4. According to SprintFeed, the only choice is to purchase the AppleCare+ Protection Plan or go through a third party to have any protection from accidental damage. Hopefully this setup isn’t permanent, but we’re not going to hold our breath. Just as a reminder, that $99 AppleCare+ can only be added at the time of purchase. But ask yourself, what’s worse? Paying $99 (the price of an iPhone 4) upfront, or paying an extra $649.99 for a new 16GB iPhone 4S after dropping your phone?
   Meanwhile you could go for a device with gorilla glass, it's incredibly hard to scratch, almost impossible to break, it doesn't shatter like cheap plastic, it doesn't bend like aluminum. Wouldn't it be awesome if the most beautiful and important part on your phone would also be the most resistant one?

Via: Sprintfeed

iPhone 5 and 4S spot defective displays, Apple regrets giving up on Samsung

    The iPhone 4 launch fiasco is about to repeat itself. A defect has presented in some iPhone 5 touch panels produced by Wintek which may affect the ability to meet initial shipment targets for the launch which is expected in October, according to iPhone supply chain makers.

In response, Wintek simply indicated that all of its products are being delivered on schedule.

   Wintek, is the company where n-hexane poisoning took place this time last year. N-hexane, a poisonous chemical was used to quicker manufacture iPhone4 screens. Wintek still accounts for 20-25% (while Taiwan TPK Holding accounts for the rest) as Apple has no problem in putting their worker's health behind profits.

   "The defect, "delayed bubble", is difficult to avoid during panel production, particularly when the defect is not detected during the process of laminating touch panels, and only later found during assembly, the sources said."

    More advanced smartphones use AMOLED or SuperAMOLED screens that are thinner, use less power and to not require the old "lamination" procedure as the display and the touch screen are one and the same panel.

Antennagate coverup over, Glassgate Coming right up

     When the iPhone 4 free bumper program finished a week ago, Antennagate "ended". But Ryan Block reports that the iPhone engineering team has discovered another major design flaw that could lead another iPhone 4 scandal.

     While we've had our own concerns over the iPhone 4's glass back, what the iPhone engineering team discovered post-Antennagate, according to Block, is that non-bumper cases that slide onto the iPhone 4 can cause scratching when particles get between the case and the glass. Those scratches can lead to serious cracking in no time.

      So if somebody puts a slider case on their phone, there's a possibility the next time they pull the phone out of the case, the back is totally busted, solely because of this design flaw. The potential issue's dire enough that Apple had blocked all third-party cases from the Apple Store until this week, even ones certified "made for iPhone." And Block hears that the engineering team has built a lab and test program just to examine this problem.

iPhone contractor Wintek sued over poisoning

       According to Stratfor Global Intelligence, 44 workers from a factory in Suzhou, China plan to sue the iPhone contractor Wintek after they were exposed to poison while cleaning iPhone screens with the chemical "n-hexane."

      The firm says 62 workers have been hospitalized in the last 9 months due to n-hexane poisoning. The poisoning is so serious that it can "cause nerve damage and sometimes paralysis."

      Stratfor goes on to say that a factory manager at the plant made the workers use the chemical because it dries faster than standard alcohol, and also leaves less streaks. That manager has since been fired.

      The issue first went public in January when 2000 protesters began smashing car windows and factory windows over a dispute relating to year-end bonuses.

       Stratfor adds:

iPhone4 - cheap materials confirmed

      "Well, this is not encouraging. The photo you're seeing above is our leader Joshua's iPhone 4 review unit, snapped by Ryan Block just moments ago. Ryan pointed out that there are some nasty scratches on the back of the phone. While we don't have any better photos of it at the moment, Josh told us that they're hard to see unless in bright light, but they look pretty notable to us for a five day-old unit made of Gorilla Glass. We'll get some better photos for you as soon as humanly possible."

Here’s how the material was described by Apple’s Jony Ive:

"We’ve also developed a custom glass that’s comparable in strength to sapphire crystal, but about 30 times harder than plastic. This glass is not only used on the front of the phone but also on the back."

iPhone`s "ultra durable" screen shatters before launch

   The A third-party solutions provider catering to customers of Apple's mobile devices, iFixYouri has recently acquired an authentic iPhone 4 enclosure whose glass panel failed to withstand a fall from just a few feet, creating an opportunity for the firm to question Apple's heightened durability claims.

    They dropped it on "the sidewalk" - probably cement, but without any internal components. This makes us wonder, if the glass breaks this bad with less than 10% of the original weight, how easy will the actual device break? How much stress will there be applied on the internal components? We complained before about capacitative screens cracking, but this is actually the worst we've seen so far. Looks like Apple neglected quality control (again) in favor of of pushing the device on the market as soon as possible.

    Nevertheless, iFix  is using this experiment to generate attention and challenge Apple's stated claim that the iPhone 4's all-new design and build quality are "like no other mobile device." The iPhone maker said earlier this week that the device's aluminosilcate glass front and back are "chemically strengthened to be 30 times harder than plastic, more scratch resistant and more durable than ever."

    iFixYouri contends that while the glass may be 30 times stronger than plastic and able to withstand bending, its durability still falls short on sudden impact, which is "what causes 95% of glass shattering. Not because you bent the glass in your pocket, not because you dropped it and it bent, but really because of sudden impact."

The iPhone 4 screen - a multimedia flop?

    We all know that iPhone started out with that is know as the lowest resolution ever used on a modern touch screen phone - 480x320px and a non-standard 3:2 aspect ratio. Why apple chose this format  is not sure but it's certain that most Chinese gadgets and knock-offs use non standard screens and they are cheaper to get than the standard ones; we should also keep in mind that the success of the first iPhone was somewhat mediocre when compared to it's non-touch counterparts like N95 and later models.

     What does that mean for the end-user? First of all it means that watching shows on either iPhone or iPad will give you two nasty horizontal thick black stripes that will pointlessly draw power while not displaying anything and that the faulty aspect ratio leads to loss of screen estate. Second, the abysmal resolution in the first iPhone made it very hard to distinguish page elements without zooming in as most web-pages retain a compatibility width of 640px. Another fun thing would be for the fourth iPhone to be called HD as it's aspect ratio resembles more to TV's from the 80's than to anything we consider HD today.

     By now you must be thinking how about the screen size? Could Apple really switch to a standard resolution like 800x480 since there's plenty of devices out there using a 3.5" screen? The short answer is no. The long answer is that the iPhoneOS does not use a scalable UI and not having a scalable UI means either the iPhone UI will either have black bars like movies currently do or the UI elements will be stretched and deformed while the applications that aren't re-coded will suffer the same faith as the UI.

    So what did apple do to overcome this huge drawback? Well so far they have done nothing as the average iPhone user doesn't even know what resolution means. But now with the fourth device of the series, that has a surprising resemblance with Nokia's internet tablet N800, Apple seems to have decided to give iPhone an internet tablet worthy resolution that other OSes (Symbian and Android) have had for years.